THIS KIND OF NEWS IS USEFUL EVEN A DAY LATE! Tell a liberal the feds have too much power and as often as not the response will include something about “so you don’t the FDA making sure your food is safe to eat?” Next time you get that, tell them about this report from the Department of Health and Human Services Inspector General. Turns out FDA bureaucrats can be just as lazy, late and unconcerned as those anywhere else in the federal Leviathan. No, I’m not surprised, either.
IF NEARLY HALF OF LIKELY VOTERS THINK FBI BROKE LAW FIGHTING TRUMP: That’s probably not a good sign for Democrats bubbling with optimism about a “blue wave” in November 2018. And note the 50 percent figure for Independents in the Rasmussen survey. Are Trump’s tweets turning the tide?
IF CORPORATE TAX CUTS ARE SO BAD, WHY ARE THE BLUE STATES SLASHING THEIRS? Leave it to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York and other blue state officials to provide yet another illustration of utter hypocrisy in politics.
Shortly after Congress approved the largest tax cut in American history and the most significant reform of the tax code since, 1986, Schumer lamented that “now we know they are popping champagne down Pennsylvania Avenue. There are only two places where America’s popping champagne: The White House and the corporate board rooms, including Trump Tower.”
Thanks to the tax reform bill, Schumer added that the measure “officially cements the Republican Party as the party of the wealthy and the party of big corporations against the middle class and the working people of this country.”
Then there’s this piquant observation from Lifezette’s Brendan Kirby, who points out that: “Even as prominent Democrats such as Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) trashed the idea, their extremely blue home states have been cutting corporate tax rates.
“The three states are among a dozen overall that have changed their corporate tax rates since 2012, according to a report this month by the Tax Foundation. All of the changes have flowed in one direction: down.”
As “they” say, you just can’t make this stuff up.
MSNBC’S JOE SCARBOROUGH IS CLAIRVOYANT. HOW ELSE COULD HE READ GOP MINDS? Forget all that stuff you’ve heard about the emails FBI counter-intelligence chief Peter Strzok exchanged with his girlfriend in which both demeaned Donald Trump. And forget that the wife of a former associate deputy attorney general worked for Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm behind the infamous “dirty dossier” on Trump.
In fact, just forget everything you’ve heard, including the FEC records about Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s staff of Democratic contributors who are investigating allegations that Trump colluded with Russia to defeat Hillary Clinton in 2016. Believe only what you read in approved media like the New York Times, Washington Post and Huffington Post. They always make Mueller’s unimpeachable virtues clear, no matter the fact pattern.
And Scarborough? Well, the former Republican congressman from Florida, is even beyond those august media outlets, thanks to his uncanny ability to discern exactly what Trump’s defenders are thinking and why they do what they do. That talent is why Scarborough can say things like this, as reported earlier today by LifeZette’s Kathryn Blackhurst:
“It seems to me that they’re just throwing whatever they can, like monkeys throwing poo against the wall. Last week, it was ‘Textgate’ scandal. So they move on to something else. What exactly is the scandal? They’re making things up every week.” Thanks, Joe, that explains a lot. Republicans are apes and criticism of Mueller is a bunch of …
Isn’t it sad that Republicans and conservatives are so intolerant and mean-spirited?
THEY SAID HE COULDN’T WIN IN 2016. NOW THEY SAY HE CAN’T WIN IN 2018? Remember all those “experts” who couldn’t conceive of any scenario in which former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would not win the 2016 presidential contest against Donald Trump. In many cases, the same experts are now predicting Republicans will get shellacked in the 2018 midterm elections because of Trump.
Now along comes LifeZette White House Correspondent Jim Stinson making a solid case for the proposition that Trump won the White House by ignoring conventional political wisdom and passage Wednesday of the biggest tax cut reform in U.S. history points to the likelihood that he will do it again next November. Are our political experts like the generals who are always fighting the last war?
Here’s a sample of Stinson’s analysis: “Wednesday’s triumph enhances Trump’s reputation as the disruptive leader who is keeping his promises and draining the Washington swamp. His tactics have always been disruptive, but now Washington’s GOP Establishment seems finally to be moving in his direction.”
HAS NANCY PELOSI FINALLY FOUND THE DEEPEST PART OF THE DEEP END? It’s hard to imagine how the aging House Minority Leader could plunge any deeper than she did in her tirade today against the Trump/GOP tax cut. Pelosi described the measure as a “tax scam” and a “monumental, brazen theft from the American middle class and from every person who aspires to reach it.” But she was just getting started at that point, according to PolitiZette’s Kathryn Blackhurst. It got deeper and deeper and …
JOHN SOLOMON SLICED AND DICED LISA BLOOM MONDAY NIGHT: It happened on Fox News’ “The Ingraham Angle” and it was brutal. Reporting last week for The Hill, Solomon was first with the news that Bloom – daughter of celebrity ambulance chaser Gloria Allred – sought multiple forms of compensation for women willing to publicly accuse Donald Trump of sexual harassment during last year’s presidential race.
In response, Bloom tried to dismiss Solomon’s reporting as the work of a “far-right journalist.” Bad mistake because Bloom’s ad hominem isn’t remotely grounded in reality. And Solomon pounced when asked about it by Laura Ingraham: “I learned a long time ago — I’ve been an investigative reporter for 30 years — if you can’t attack the facts, you try to do an ad hominem attack on the reporter. The facts are unassailable.”
It was downhill from there, at least for Bloom. LifeZette’s Brendan Kirby has the details.
CUOMO, SCARBOROUGH SHOW SERIOUS SYMPTOMS OF TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME: Every day seems to bring new evidence of media folks who just cannot maintain perspective about the reality that Donald Trump occupies the Oval Office because he won the majority in the 2016 presidential contest with Hillary Clinton. LifeZette’s Kathryn Blackhurst has the details.
WHAT IF LISA BLOOM CROSSED THE CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM LINE? It may seem a bit of a stretch but Kathryn Blackhurst of LifeZette talked to a really smart lawyer who offered this intriguing observation:
“I don’t know that campaign finance law wanted to discourage people from coming out with factual allegations about candidates or anybody in society by requiring money to be reported. That was not the real purpose of campaign finance law. Although since this does appear to be trying to influence an election, it could fall under the realm of campaign finance law,” said Mark Fitzgibbons, president of American Target Advertising in Manassas, Va.
Fitzgibbons added that it would be “very troubling from a legal ethics perspective” if a PAC associated with Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign was involved in any way in Bloom’s activities.
REMEMBER THIS NAME AND REMEMBER THIS DATE: The name is Michael Horowitz. The date is Jan. 12, 2017. Horowitz is the Inspector-General of the Department of Justice. January 12, 2017, is the date Horowitz announced an investigation of these factors:
• Allegations that Department or FBI policies or procedures were not followed in connection with, or in actions leading up to or related to, the FBI Director’s public announcement on July 5, 2016, and the Director’s letters to Congress on October 28 and November 6, 2016, and that certain underlying investigative decisions were based on improper considerations;
• Allegations that the FBI Deputy Director should have been recused from participating in certain investigative matters;
• Allegations that the Department’s Assistant Attorney General for Legislative Affairs improperly disclosed non-public information to the Clinton campaign and/or should have been recused from participating in certain matters;
• Allegations that Department and FBI employees improperly disclosed non-public information;
• Allegations that decisions regarding the timing of the FBI’s release of certain Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) documents on October 30 and November 1, 2016, and the use of a Twitter account to publicize same, were influenced by improper considerations.
The Horowitz probe is why Peter Strzok’s amazing emails were discovered. As sensational as those emails are, the more important question is what occasioned their becoming available to the Horowitz investigators. The DOJ IG is nobody’s fool and his report is just over the horizon. Just ask American Thinker’s Thomas Lifson.
There are more than 70 IGs in the federal government in positions created in 1978 during the Carter administration. There have been some bad eggs among the IGs over the years but collectively, the IG community has been the unsung hero in efforts to expose and prosecute waste, fraud and abuse in government. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, has been the IGs’ strongest advocate in Congress.
And there’s this: The journo community in the nation’s capital has been rumbling in recent days about a bombshell report supposedly being prepared for publication by the Washington Post that will ruin the careers of dozens of Members of Congress, from both parties.
Fasten your seatbelts, folks.
THIS IS HOW AN OBITUARY SHOULD BE WRITTEN: Robert Charles Sproul – aka “R.C.” – passed away earlier today. Sproul was known, loved and profoundly respected among American and European evangelical and reformed thinkers and evangelists but relatively obscure to the general public. That’s the nation’s misfortune. Dr. Al Mohler, Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and increasingly America’s pre-eminent evangelical public intellectual, explains why in a moving tribute that includes this arresting paragraph and much more:
“He was, as the British would say, a man in full. He never made a half-argument, presented a half-correction, preached a half-sermon, or laughed a half-laugh. He was all in, all the time. His voice would fill the room, his preaching would shake the timbers, and his passion would spread like a virus. He showed up as everything he was and with everything he believed – every time.”
Whether you’re a Christian or not, wouldn’t you want to live that kind of life?
WASHINGTON GOP BLEW THE ALABAMA RACE BUT NOT LIKE YOU THINK: LifeZette’s Brendan Kirby quotes a former Alabama Republican State Chairman Marty Connors pointed to the GOP’s failure to produce on its promises as a determining factor:
“If you go to any watering hole in suburban Alabama or rural Alabama, everybody is very, very angry at Washington and they are blaming Republicans, which is the rise of Roy Moore in this race. Had tax reform had been passed two or three months ago, this would not have been an issue. If Obamacare had been repealed, this would not have been an issue.”
Hmmm, maybe that Barnett feller at Georgetown has a point!
CONSERVATIVE ICON SEES FOUR REASONS FOR A MOORE WIN: Dan Oliver has seen it all, heard it all. Former FTC Commissioner, chairman of the board for National Review during its golden Buckley era and much, much more.
In his Tuesday Washington Times column, Oliver lays out four imminently reasonable factors he thinks point to a Roy Moore win in today’s Alabama special election for the U.S. Senate seat formerly held by Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
Here’s Oliver’s opening: “First, the Moore story was broken by The Washington Post, which has little or no credibility among Trump supporters, who also tend to be Roy Moore supporters. Having savaged Donald Trump relentlessly, The Post is seen as a propaganda arm of the Democratic Party. Nevertheless, and ironically, The Post’s story on Mr. Moore may have been factually correct.”
Worth the click to get Oliver’s other three factors.
FRANKEN, BARTON, CONYERS, ETC. WILL IT NEVER END?: Dr. Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, offers a trenchant analysis of what’s fueling the burgeoning congressional sex scandal and why it isn’t likely to end soon. Check out the first segment of his Friday podcast, “The Combustible Mix of Scandal, Moral Relativism and Political Expediency.”
NOT SO FAST ON THAT NATIONAL CONCEALED CARRY RECIPROCITY BILL: Legislation mandating 50-state recognition of concealed carry permits is making its way through Congress, much to the delight of gun owners and Second Amendment defenders. But Rep. Thomas Massie, R-KY, tells LifeZette’s Jim Stinson the proposal contains a bad bargain.
“They’re going to get a little bit of gun control in the mix with it,” Massie told Stinson. “States and federal agencies will be coerced to put more names in the database.” How can that be? Well, the Senate version of the proposal is co-sponsored by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-CA., and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York. They want to give $625 million to states to expand the National Instant Criminal Background Check (NCIS) database.
Stinson reports that Massie “is perplexed as to why Republican leadership in the House and the Senate is rushing to enhance NICS, when former President Barack Obama used the system to bar gun ownership based on what Social Security reported to the database on mental disabilities. Massie said he even suspects concealed carry could be stripped out of the final bill, the apparent aim of Feinstein and Schumer all along.”
Stinson said Gun Owners of America (GOA) opposes the Senate measure. The NRA backs the House version of the proposal.
CHARITY FRAUD NETS EX-CONGRESSWOMAN FIVE YEARS IN PRISON: Former Rep. Corrine Brown, D-FL, was sentenced earlier today to five years in prison for what her judge described as “a crime born out of entitlement and greed.” Specifically, Brown raised an estimated $800,000 for a sham charity, according to the Tallahassee Democrat. She was convicted earlier this year on 18 of 22 charges that included tax fraud and lying on her congressional spending reports. She represented a Jacksonville district for 25 years. By comparison, the Clinton Foundation charity run by Bill and Hillary Clinton since 1997 raised more than $233 million in 2016 alone.
DOES SAME-SEX MARRIAGE TRUMP THE FIRST FREEDOM IN THE FIRST AMENDMENT? That’s the essential question facing the U.S. Supreme Court as it deliberates in what quite possibly will become a landmark case. Remember the name: Masterpiece Cakeshop v Colorado Civil Rights Commission. The Court hears oral arguments Tuesday.
Jack Phillips, owner of the cakeshop, refused five years ago to design a wedding cake for a gay couple’s ceremony. An evangelical Christian, Phillips believes his creative participation in a process that violates his faith would make him a party to legitimizing sin. The bureaucrats at the commission ruled that protecting same-sex marriage is more important than upholding Philips’ exercise of the first freedom named in the First Amendment.
The case has occasioned a deluge of politically correct mis-information and mis-representation in the national media, as exemplified by this recent op-ed in the New York Times. I refer readers to NRO’s sage David French for the critical analysis there. One wonders how long before a Muslim man asks the Court to affirm his right to marry a nine-year-old girl.
In the meantime, the Alliance Defending Freedom – the evangelical legal defense group representing Philips – offers a collection of the key documents in the case, an overview of the facts that occasion the litigation, and a summary of the legal issues at stake. They just don’t come any more significant than this one.
UPDATE: George Will also gets the Masterpiece Cakeshop wrong, according to French.
SHOULD “MADE IN CHINA” BE STAMPED ON THOSE NORTH KOREAN MISSILES? Well, ask yourself how a country so isolated and poor that it can’t properly feed its soldiers obtains the costly and sophisticated materials and technology that go into an ICBM. Or, as Steve Mosher put it on LifeZette today:
“Even more to the point, how did a dirt-poor country that can barely manage to feed its people acquire the sophisticated technical and manufacturing know-how necessary to build nuclear weapons and deploy ballistic missiles? The answer is that it didn’t. Instead, it relied upon its only ally, China — the one country to which it is bound by a mutual defense treaty — to provide these things.”
So, here’s another question: Is China on the one hand telling the U.S. it will will help convince North Korea to stop developing nuclear missiles capable of hitting the continental U.S. while on the other shipping the very parts and know-how that make those lethal weapons a reality? Mosher’s answer is deeply disturbing.
THIS IS WHY AMERICANS DON’T TRUST THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA: Pick up today’s Washington Post and scan the lead story headlined “GOP Secures Senate Votes To Pass Tax Bill.” So far, so good. Then check out the first sub-head: “MOST BENEFITS FOR BUSINESSES, WEALTHY.” That’s the controlling assumption of the analysis – not “objective reporting” – that follows.
The story’s lede claims the bill “bestows massive benefits on corporate America and the wealthy while delivering mixed blessings to everybody else.” Tax cuts mostly benefit the rich is the standard Democrat talking point and Post reporters Erica Werner and Damian Paletta dutifully frame their reporting in such terms.
But do the wealthy get bigger tax cuts than the middle class or the poor? Depends on how the effects of the cuts are measured. The Post reporters cite a Joint Committee on Taxation analysis that, among much else, concludes “only 44 percent of taxpayers would see see their burden reduced by more than $500 in 2019 but that high earners would fare much better than the poor under the bill.”
What the Post reporters don’t tell readers is that other measures of the Senate tax cut bill’s effects contradict their chosen – Democratic – narrative. To cite just one example, the Cato Institute’s Chris Edwards looked at the aggregate percentage cuts by income range. Taxpayers earning $40,000 to $50,000 annually would see a 51 percent reduction. Similarly, those earning $75,000 to $100,000 would see a 17 percent aggregate reduction.
And the wealthy? Edwards calculated a 5.8 percent cut for those earning $1 million or more annually.
There other ways to slice and dice the effects of the Senate bill, but don’t look to the Post story for such useful information. And then journalists wonder why most Americans don’t believe them?
Their disbelief is deep indeed, as seen in the recent HarvardHarris Poll, as reported by The Hill, which said “65 percent of voters believe there is a lot of fake news in the mainstream media. That number includes 80 percent of Republicans, 60 percent of independents and 53 percent of Democrats.”
BTW, the online version of the Post story is no better even though there is infinitely more space to provide balance.
ANOTHER NO RUSSIA COLLUSION “THERE” THERE UPDATE: Former federal prosecutor Joseph DiGenova tells Fox News’ Laura Ingraham the Flynn indictment is another nothing-burger in Russia collusion. Maybe the strangest part of it, though, is why Flynn lied about legal activities:
“All of Flynn’s conversations with the ambassador to Russia were perfectly legal during the transition period and even before. It’s not a crime to communicate with an ambassador of a foreign country about foreign policy when you are the foreign policy adviser to the incoming president. So I don’t know why he lied. It’s inconceivable to me. If he had told the truth, there would be no crime.”
THIS TOP OBAMA APPOINTEE LIVED HIGH ON THE HOG AND YOU PAID FOR IT: Stefan Selig started a senior position as an Obama political appointee at the Department of Commerce in November 2013. In the following weeks, here’s a few of the ways he spent tax dollars, according to the Inspector General:
The Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group’s Katie Watson reports the IG began looking into Selig’s spending after getting a confidential tip sometime in 2015. But in its report made public this week, the IG said nothing about recommending prosecution. Stay tuned for what happens next week when Watson starts asking questions folks at the Commerce Department probably aren’t going to want to answer.
HERE’S HOW THE CLINTON FOUNDATION DECEIVED THE IRS AND GOT AWAY WITH IT: A little lie here, another bigger one there, and in a few years, Clinton insiders transformed a presidential library project into a global network for selling political influence and access on a never-before-seen scale. NOTE: When I posted a link to the story on my Facebook page earlier today, Facebook promptly deleted it. Their notification offered the option of fill out a form to object. Can somebody please show me where that appears in the First Amendment?
UPDATE: Just received this from a Facebook spokesman:
“The post was removed in error and restored as soon as we were able to investigate. Our team processes millions of reports each week, and we sometimes get things wrong. We’re very sorry about this mistake.”
FEDS TOLD TO FIND THE FUGITIVE FELONS LIVING IN PUBLIC HOUSING AND EVICT THEM: Does good old fashioned shoe-leather reporting still make a difference? Consider Ethan Barton of the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group. His work exposed the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s failure to enforce the law barring fugitive felons from living in public housing.
And now, as Barton reports today, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley is telling the HUD Inspector General to stop playing games about a previously unpublished 2012 report. That document estimated that 1,300 fugitive felons were living in public housing in just one HUD region. Grassley thinks it’s time for government officials to get serious about finding such fugitives and removing them, as required by federal law.
“’It is troubling that the full number of wanted fugitive felons living in public housing remains unknown, unexplained, undocumented and unjustified,’ the Iowa Republican wrote in a letter to HUD Inspector General (IG) David Montoya Wednesday. ‘Tenants deserve to know if a wanted fugitive felon is living in the same housing project.’
“So, Grassley wants the HUD IG to do ‘a thorough, nationwide investigation into the number of wanted fugitive felons living in public housing and the adequacy of controls in place to prevent that from occurring. The American people need assurance that HUD is enforcing the law and ensuring the safety and security of public housing tenants.’”
Grassley’s directive culminated a process that began several weeks ago when Barton first reported the 2012 document. When he asked the IG what was done about the 1,300 fugitive felons, he got the run-around and a claim the report was never published because it was based on faulty data. But what made the data faulty was never explained, to Barton or to Grassley.
It will take a while but ultimately Grassley’s directive should result in hundreds of dangerous criminals being removed from public housing and brought to justice. No telling how many murders and rapes will never happen now because a persistent journalist refused to go away.
IS THE NRC ABOUT TO ENABLE AN AMERICAN CHERNOBYL BY TERRORISTS? Dozens of people died when the Soviet Union’s Chernobyl nuclear power plant malfunctioned, melted down and spewed radioactivity over a broad swath of the Ukraine’s geography. A new Inspector General report includes a terrifying peek at what could happen here.
The problem is the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s bureaucracy doesn’t know how many digital information systems it has that handle classified information and thus cannot ensure their security, according to the IG, reports the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group’s Katie Watson.
“Failing to assess a system’s risks appropriately before using it could enable hackers to gain access to classified information, although the IG didn’t find any instances of that happening,” at least not yet, Watson reports. It is possible, of course, for hackers to leave no evidence of their presence.
“If a hard drive with classified information is put into a computer only authorized for unclassified information, there could be an information spill and the information may be vulnerable because the computer does not have the proper protections in place,” the IG said.
Could such an event enable hackers working for ISIS or other terrorist groups gaining sufficient access to a U.S. nuclear plant’s controls to cause it to malfunction? Chernobyl was caused by an unexplained power surge.
GRASSLEY WANTS TO KNOW WHY FEDS AREN’T ENFORCING THE LAW: Federal law bars fugitives from the law from living, even temporarily, in tax-funded public housing. But an unpublished Inspector General report in 2012 found an estimated 1,300 such fugitives in just one region of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, according to Ethan Barton of the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley isn’t buying the HUD IG’s claim the report wasn’t published because of “data problems” when it was completed. The IG also said the report was a draft, despite the fact such status was nowhere indicated on the copy obtained by TheDCNF.
“The HUD Inspector General needs to explain whether the wanted fugitive felon report was final or not and if there are problems with the data,” Grassley told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “And HUD needs to explain why the federal law isn’t being enforced.”
“These discrepancies don’t inspire confidence that the agency has a good handle on wanted fugitive felons in public housing or that the residents are being adequately protected. Inspector general reports should be public with very few exceptions,” he said.
Here’s the really troubling question: If there are 1,300 in one HUD region four years ago, how many are there across the nation today?
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